Adding personalization to your marketing assets, like a recipient’s first name or company information, has been a hallmark of the marketing automation world for as long as I’ve been a marketer – probably longer. Legacy Salesforce tools for marketers have included ways to personalize content using data that resides in the system you’re working within – Account Engagement or Engagement – but with the Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Edition Salesforce has introduced a way to include personalization from multiple sources.

Cross Object Personalization opens up a world of possibilities when it comes to crafting the perfect message for your audience. Imagine post-virtual event follow up emails that include specific sessions an attendee was at and links to where they can find recordings for sessions they missed, or a personalized post-purchase nurture program that pulls in data from the customers most recent order. This is achieved by creating Data Graphs that allow you to add fields and other objects as related attributes to the Unified Individual.

Creating a Data Graph

The first step in cross object personalization is creating a Data Graph in Data Cloud. We’ll build this Data Graph based on the Unified Individual object and whichever objects hold the data you want to reference in your Marketing assets. You can only have one Data Graph per Marketing Cloud instance, so you’ll want to keep that in mind as you’re thinking through your connections.

Build a New Data Graph

To build out your Data Graph, select the App Manager and search for Data Graphs.

Select “New” in the upper right hand corner and then choose “Start from Scratch”.

Next select your Data Graph Type

• Near Real-Time: Updates within a short time frame but not necessarily instantly. This option is recommended in most use cases and will help you save on Data Cloud credits.
• Real-Time: Updates immediately with new information. Each update consumes Data Cloud credits.

Name your Data Graph, leave the Data Space as default, and choose the Unified Individual as your Primary Data Model Object.

On the next screen you’ll be able to choose which objects and fields you’d like to include in this Data Graph by clicking on the + button next to “Unified Individual”.

Depending on which of these objects you select, you’ll have a range of different options – either diving deeper into related objects or selecting fields you want to include from that object on the right hand side of the screen.

In the following example, I have drilled down to Campaign Member to bring in Campaign Name, Campaign Member Status, and Campaign First Response DateTime fields into Marketing Cloud. I’ve achieved this by going from Unified Individual > Unified Link Individual > Individual > Campaign Member. At each of these levels of data I am able to select fields I’d like to include in the Data Graph, which will make them available for use as personalization items in Marketing Cloud.

The Data Model Objects section on the left side of the screen displays the number of fields selected to bring into the Data Graph, as well as the total number of fields available and if there are any filters setup on these objects.

On the right side of the screen, we’re able to see the selected Data Model Object, in this case Campaign Member, and all of the fields available for us to bring into our Data Graph. Any field that’s marked with the icon will automatically be selected to be brought in as it is either a Primary Key, Foreign Key, or Key Identifier used to link to other objects in Data Cloud.

Save and Build Your Data Graph

Once you have selected all of your objects and related fields for your Data Graph, click Save and Build in the upper right corner.

Select a refresh interval for your Data Graph. Remember – every time you refresh your data you’re consuming credits, so think carefully about how often you need to refresh this data. You can always adjust this later if you decide your refresh rate is too slow or too fast.

Deploying Your Data Graph

Now that you have successfully set up your Data Graph with additional objects and fields for personalization, deploy it so it can be used within Marketing Cloud. Head to Salesforce Setup, then in the Quick Find box search for “Reporting and Optimization”.

From there, click on the Customer Engagement tab. At the bottom of the page, under Configure Basic Personalization, click into the drop down menu to select a Data Graph.

Personalize To Your Heart’s Content

Now that you have successfully deployed your Data Graph, you’re ready to start personalizing your Marketing assets! We’ll build a Single Email Campaign for our example by going to App Manager > Marketing > Campaigns and creating a new Campaign.

Customizing your Email

Select Edit from the top right hand corner to open your email in the builder.

Select a Paragraph Component or drag and drop a new Paragraph Component onto the canvas. When a Paragraph Component is selected, an editing menu will appear along the top. Select the { } icon to enter a merge field.

Once selected, choose the Select Data Graph Attribute option.

Next, you can choose between Primary and Related Objects. Primary Objects will allow you to enter direct information about the Unified Individual, such as their First Name. Related Objects will allow you to enter any of the related fields you selected when building your Data Graph.

After you’ve selected your merge field, configure your merge field details. This includes the Merge Field API Name and Fallback Text that will be used if the recipient does not have a value in this field.

Select Done and you can see your merge tag inserted into your Paragraph Component.

Get Started with Cross-Object Personalization

Cross-object Personalization with Marketing Cloud brings an incredible amount of flexibility with how you personalize your marketing assets. With Data Graphs, you’re able to bring in any data that is tied back to the Unified Individual into your Marketing Cloud organization and personalize to your heart’s content!

Original article: Cross Object Personalization with Marketing Cloud

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As inbound marketing efforts continue to grow across industries, marketers are having to come up with new ways to qualify the best of these new leads. Once they’ve been qualified by marketing, the next challenge is making sure the sales team gets the lead at the right time in their journey to capitalize on their interest. 

With Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) you can use prospect scoring and grading together to surface the most relevant leads. Combined with the automation tools built into the platform, you can save time by automatically qualifying leads and routing them to the appropriate sales person or team. 

In this blog, we’ll discuss how these two systems work together and the best ways to automate your approach.

Pardot Prospect Grading

Prospect grading takes place once you have set up your company’s ideal customer profile (ICP) and have a set of factors to evaluate a new prospect on. The best ICP’s are made up of quantifiable data, like number of employees, industry, job title and location. 

Once you have determined your criteria, you can provide the information to Pardot, and the system will automatically apply a letter grade (A-F) to prospects as new data is collected. 

To learn more about setting this up, check out Pardot Grading 101. 

For now, let’s take a look at some of the common criteria that marketers use to grade their prospects:

 

• Location – If your organization uses geography to prioritize leads, you can adjust a prospect grade based on what location they provide.
• Industry – Market and sell only to the industries that your business is targeting.
• Job Title – Be sure you’re reaching the influencers and decision makers at an organization.
• Company Size – Be Goldilocks and only reach out to the companies that are just right for you.

   

Try it out for yourself!

Not sure how prospect grading works in the real world? Here’s a chance for you to see how this functionality might work in your own organization.

Tell Us About Your Ideal Lead:

What sized companies do you target?

Small Medium Large

What industry do you typically target?

Technology Service Other

What department do you sell to?

Marketing Sales Services

Who are you typically targeting?

Mid-Level Manager C-Level
Grade Lead

D+

Pardot Prospect Scoring

You can use the Pardot prospect score in conjunction with the prospect grade to make sure only the best leads are being passed on to the sales team as qualified. Lead scores are a numerical value that can help you determine how interested a prospect is in working with your company. 

With prospect scoring, you assign points to the actions you decide are the most important. These points are totaled up and displayed as the prospect score and helps you determine how engaged a prospect has been with your marketing materials.

Let’s take a look at some of the actions you could use to influence a prospect score:

• Page Views – Increase a prospect score with every page visit on your website.

• Form Submission/Landing Page Success – Add points if a prospect fills out an important form on your website or landing page.

• File Access – Adjust a score based on a prospect downloading an important file. 

• Email Clicks – Good interaction with your email content may be an important indicator of how interested a prospect is in your offerings.

Let’s see it in action

I mentioned earlier that using prospect scoring and grading together can help to only qualify the best leads and send them to the sales team. Using these two tools can give you a better understanding of the prospects you’re working with and how to market to them appropriately. 

Check out each of the leads below to learn more about how their score and grade impact marketing efforts.

Learn more about Roy

Roy is a great fit for your product or service, but either hasn't had time to do any research, or doesn’t know that your product exists yet. This lack of activity is why he has a high grade, but a low score.

Recommended Action: Call him or place him on a nurturing campaign.

Learn more about Ryan

Ryan is a student interested in an internship with your company. All of his activity on your site (like browsing your careers page) has given him a great score, but since he is not going to purchase, he receives a low grade.

Recommended Action: Do not assign Ryan to a sales rep.

Learn more about Katie

Katie is enthusiastic about your company, but may not be the best fit for your product. This gives her a decent score, but moderate grade.

Recommended Action: Nurture Katie with a drip campaign to conserve resources.

Learn more about Renee

Renee is a great lead who has been working with your sales team for a while. She has done her research, has a lot of interest in your product, and fits your ideal profile. This gives her a great grade and terrific score.

Recommended Action: Send Renee pricing and bottom-of-funnel resources.

Better Together: Pardot Prospect Scoring and Grading

Prospect scoring and grading can work fine separately, but I think they work best when used together as seen in the example above. 

With automation rules, you’re able to tell Pardot to send prospects to the appropriate sales representative and add them to lists or engagement studio programs when they reach the right combination of score and grade. This helps to ensure only the best leads are being sent to the sales team, and that you’re sending the right information to the right prospects at their stage of the buying cycle.

Don’t be afraid to subtract points or letter grades for bad matches, either! You can use page actions to subtract points from a prospects score if they (for example) visit your careers page. You’re also able to set up grading to lower a prospects letter grade if they’re the exact opposite of your ideal customer profile. 

Let me know in the comments if you’ve got more questions about these two tools, or reach out to us for help with your own prospect scoring and grading strategy.

Original article: Pardot Scoring & Grading Lab

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The post Pardot Scoring & Grading Lab appeared first on The Spot.